C is for Coca-Cola Crates, Chacma, Carmichael and Craven

Can I complete the whole of Round 9 of ABC Wednesday based on our four week stay in South Africa in February? Click on the photos to enlarge.

This was one of my favourite sights in Cape Town, a “statue” made entirely out of Coca-Cola crates, 4,200 of them to be precise.

The Crate Fan stands 18 metres high and can be found at the Victoria and Alfred waterfront where it was built to celebrate the 2010 World Cup.

Now it is used to promote recycling which Capetonians and very keen on. Understandable if you live by the sea and the next stop south is Antarctica..

But for even more spectacular scenery, it hard to beat the Cape Peninsula itself. On the right is a photo taken at the Cape of Good Hope, the most south-westerly point of Africa.

It is a wild place and the explorer Bartolomeu Dias originally named it Cabo das Tormentas (Cape of Tempests), but it was renamed Cabo da Boa Esperança, (Cape of Good Hope), by John II of Portugal in an early example of salesman’s spin.

At Cape Point you’ll find this statue of a Chacma Baboon with its youngster riding on its back.

They are unusual in having developed a taste for seafood and are pretty clever as they have learned to chew or suck kaolin clay when they have an upset stomach.

But they are in danger of extinction because of people feeding them. As the plaque explains:

“To feed a baboon is to sign its death warrant, as sooner or later it will become a problem and have to be destroyed. This disturbs the social structure and behaviour of the troop.”

And that would be a sad end for a most engaging creature.

Finally, our base for the duration of our stay was the excellent Carmichael Guest House in Rosebank. Built in 1901, it is a fine example Victorian design with its stained glass, wooden floors and the tiled hall pictured right.

It transpired that the tiles were manufactured by Craven & Dunnill in Shropshire, England, and exported to SA. The company is sadly no more, but their work can be seen in many English churches, including Chester and Shrewsbury Cathedrals.

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An interesting post (as usual) but one thing that bothers me is this – with all those crates being used to make “Crate Fan” where the hell have all the bottles of Coca Cola gone? Washed out to Antarctica no doubt!

Thanks all. As I mentioned, Capetonians are keen on recycling and that seems to be what happens to the plastic bottles. But they also use glass bottles and still operate a returnable deposit system that seems to work well and perhaps we should think of reintroducing the idea.

You have a potpourri of “C” words here but the crate statue really captured my attention. There is no end to the things mankind will do in the name of art. A perfectly fine way of recycling AND should there be a shortage of crates one day we’ll know exactly where to look. 🙂